“Some Feel It Was Way Too Soon”: After Sanders’s Biden Endorsement, “Party Unity” Is Still a Long Way Away

Sanders says not supporting Biden would be “irresponsible”—but the deep distrust of “the establishment wing” among his supporters is far from dissipating. Job one for Biden: “Engaging progressive, young Americans.”

Bernie Sanders’s endorsement of Joe Biden Monday morning took even some of his staunchest allies by surprise. Coming just five days after the Vermont senator dropped out of the presidential race, Sanders’s decision to back his once chief rival in the Democratic presidential primary felt almost premature, particularly in light of how long Sanders stuck around in the race against Hillary Clinton in 2016. At least one top Sanders’s surrogate was blindsided by the news, according to a source familiar with the situation. Many progressives, while genuflecting to his crucial role, were also critical. “Obviously, he is the trailblazer and progressive godfather but some feel it was way too soon without public concessions,” a source within the Sanders’s camp told me. So, for Biden, winning Sanders’s endorsement was only a modest first step in closing the deal with movement progressives, with many still signaling an enduring opposition to the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Sanders’s decision to back Biden so quickly can, in part, be chalked up to a genuine affinity the Vermont lawmaker has for the former vice president, a senior progressive Hill staffer familiar with their relationship told me. But more than anything, Sanders’s decision to somewhat hastily cede the inherent leverage in withholding his endorsement was rooted in the existential threat he believes Donald Trump poses to the most important progressive values. “There were very few political analysts who really foresaw Trump actually having a shot at winning the election in 2016,” this source explained. “The question of retaining a strong position, being able to build off of unexpected victories in particular primary states and building toward a strong Democratic convention was another reason why I think the senator wanted to stay in the race and fight till the end.” With Trump in office, the stakes are even higher. “It’s certainly a 180 from Bernie’s 2016 strategy to leverage the power of his delegates. I think he, rightly, understands that there isn’t the same value in pushing the platform left that there was in 2016,” a second progressive senior Hill staffer told me. “Overall, I think it’s smart if this ‘early’ endorsement means he is able to influence the campaign’s policy priorities and personnel selection during the transition.”

Speaking with Biden via livestream on Monday, Sanders did signal this to be a preeminent rationale, telling his former Senate colleague “we need you in the White House,” and pushed for party unity. “We are in a terrible moment, an unprecedented moment, and I know we share the understanding that we’ve got to go forward, right now and out of this, in an unprecedented way to address the terrible pain that so many of our fellow Americans are feeling,” Sanders said. “So today I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat and I’m asking every Independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, to make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe, and I’m speaking just for myself now, is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.”

In an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanders bluntly laid bare his view, asserting that it would be “irresponsible” for progressives to “sit on their hands” in the coming months. “Do we be as active as we can in electing Joe Biden and doing everything we can to move Joe and his campaign in a more progressive direction? Or do we choose to sit it out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get reelected?” he continued.

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Sanders’s message to his supporters and the broader Democratic Party echoed what former President Barack Obama has been saying behind the scenes. According to a source familiar with the dynamics, Obama has been engaged in regular conversations with Democratic candidates—before, during, and after their respective campaigns—including Sanders, in which he has continually stressed that beating Trump is critical. “He was impressed by the caliber of our candidates and the strong campaigns they waged—but always urged them to keep in mind that we must be well-positioned to unify as a party once we have a nominee,” this person told me. “To that end, over the last few weeks, he’s had multiple conversations with candidates, including Senator Sanders, about how to best position the Democratic Party to win in November. While the content of those conversations remains private, there was always agreement that winning in the fall was paramount. He is proud that our talented field has quickly and authentically coalesced around Vice President Biden.”

Less than 24 hours after Sanders’s backed Biden, Obama—who has publicly refrained from putting his finger on the scale in the primary—followed suit. And in a video posted to social media, Obama reiterated these pleas for party unity while praising the movement Sanders built—and even intimating that his views had evolved in Sanders’s direction. “Each of our candidates were talented and decent, with a track record of accomplishment, smart ideas and serious visions for the future. And that is certainly true of the candidate who made it farther than any other, Bernie Sanders. Bernie’s an American original, a man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working people’s hopes, dreams, and frustrations,” Obama said. “I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency. But if I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different; there is too much unfinished business for us to just look backward. We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that. And Joe understands that.”

But among progressives I spoke with, a couple of high-profile endorsements—even one from Sanders—is only a first step, and party unity is quite a ways away. In an interview with the New York Times published Monday morning, just hours before Sanders endorsed Biden, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid out what seems to be the overarching sentiment among progressives I’ve spoken with. “There’s also this idea that if we all just support the nominee that voters will come along as well. I’ve flagged, very early, two patterns that I saw [among Biden’s campaign], which is underperformance among Latinos and young people, both of which are very important demographics in November. And so, I don’t think this conversation about changes that need to be made is one about throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones—I think this is about how we can win,” the firebrand freshman said. “The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved—that’s how you know it’s working. And if Biden is only doing things he’s comfortable with, then it’s not enough.” (Asked Tuesday if Ocasio-Cortez had anything to add to her remarks after the Sanders’s endorsement, a spokesperson said no.)

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, another prominent Sanders surrogate, struck a similar tone. “The progressive movement has never been about one individual. It is about issues. Exit poll after exit poll finds that voters support a bold Democratic platform that includes ‘Medicare for all,’ a Green New Deal, and Student Debt Cancellation,” the Minnesota lawmaker said in a statement. “Our focus now should be on ensuring that we get the most bold, progressive agenda possible from our Democratic candidate—because that is what Americans want. That’s how Vice President Biden can increase enthusiasm for his candidacy. And that is how we will defeat Donald Trump in November.”

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Progressives I spoke with are not interested in lip service and there is a concern that Biden’s early entreaties to the movement won’t result in real change. “I feel a bit of anxiety regarding how the kinds of different currents are within the Biden camp. On one hand it seems like Biden himself is pretty amenable to kind of making entreaties and doing the kind of routine backslapping, coalition-style politics that he engaged in as a legislator,” the first progressive senior Hill staffer told me. “I think that like one of the interesting things about Biden is that, you know, he doesn’t necessarily have firm core, guiding principles and beliefs that have kind of undergirded his vision for politics. I think it’s just basic personal idiosyncrasies and gut feelings with him. So on one hand, I think that he’s amenable to it. On the other, I think that there’s a very hardcore faction that really would not want to make any major and significant kinds of concessions to the left.”

What exactly will be enough to win over the left remains an open question, but as the novel coronavirus tears through the country, there is a growing sense that Biden will have to close the policy gap on health care at the very least. “To me it seems like with the COVID-19 crisis, just a basic recognition that is a kind of a moral and policy truism at this stage is that the current relationship between employer-based health care and the way that this could be stripped from you immediately, that fundamental question is completely left untouched. There’s just zero recognition from the establishment wing that this is even an issue,” the progressive staffer explained. “My sense is from the activist space that has to at least be some acknowledgment that this is totally insane and that it simply can’t hold. So for me, I think that that’s going to be a main hurdle for a Biden candidacy to overcome in order to have a good faith engagement with the left.”

There is a recognition within the Biden campaign that it needs the left in order to beat Trump. “We’ve been talking about that broad and diverse coalition for a long time and we know that we need the support of progressives to build the strongest coalition possible,” a Biden campaign official told me. “That’s why we are focused and that’s why we have been and will remain focused on engaging progressive, young Americans, climate and racial justice activists, Latinos and frankly, any other core constituency who we need to help us win in November.” And Biden has personally reached out to progressives in recent remarks. “To your supporters I make the same commitment: I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of what it is we have to get done in this country. I hope you will join us. You are more than welcome. You’re needed,” the former vice president said to Sanders’s supporters last week.

Biden has already adopted a series of progressive policies proposals including Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy reform proposal, the College For All Act, introduced by Sanders and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, which would make public college tuition-free for families who make under $125,000, outlined new steps to ease economic burdens for working people, including forgiving all student debt for individuals who make less than $125,000 and attended a public college or university or private HBCUs and MSIs, and proposed lowering the Medicare age to 60. Additionally, the Biden campaign official told me the vice president’s team has engaged in regular conversations with progressive groups—both legacy groups such as Planned Parenthood and more nascent groups including the Sunrise Movement, March for Our Lives, and United We Dream. “In those conversations we have been primarily focused on identifying the common ground and where we agree upon on specific policies that the vice president has. And that’s one component,” the campaign official told me. “The second component is looking for ways to collaborate in terms of our shared goal of defeating Donald Trump.”

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A key aspect of Biden’s plan to build out this winning coalition is six working groups he and Sanders announced in the Monday livestream focused on education, criminal justice, climate change, immigration, the economy, and health care policy during the 2020 race. Already, the idea has gained plaudits from progressives. “The announcement of joint Sanders–Biden task forces is a good step forward,” Waleed Shahid, the communications director for Justice Democrats told me, adding that the premise is aligned with a series of proposals a group of progressive youth-faced organizations urged Biden to adopt in an open letter sent last week after Sanders dropped out of the primary. But Shahid, added the caveat, “We’re waiting on the details.” And even Sanders signaled in the livestream that he was seeking substance from the working groups. “It’s no great secret out there, Joe, that you and I have our differences. We’re not going to paper them over—that’s real,” the Vermont senator said. “But I hope that these task forces will come together, utilizing the best minds and people in your campaign and in my campaign to work out real solutions to these very, very important problems.”

But not all progressives have indicated an openness—even a conditional one—to Biden. Briahna Joy Gray, who served as Sanders’s national press secretary, wrote on Twitter Monday, “With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don’t endorse Joe Biden,” noting the gulfs in policy differences between the two. She subsequently went on to dismiss Biden’s proposal to lower the Medicare eligibility age as insulting, while also taking aim at the former vice president over sexual assault allegations by Tara Reade. (Biden’s campaign has denied the accusation. And in the interview with the Associated Press, Sanders seemed to distance himself from Joy Gray.) Other high-profile Sanders supporters including activist Shaun King and Intercept editor Jeremy Scahill have echoed similar attacks on Biden, despite the Sanders endorsement.

When asked about vocal critics of Biden and his campaign, the official declined to address any specifically. “We strongly believe that everyone shares the same goal of defeating Donald Trump. And our campaign is going to work with anyone and everyone who wants to make him a one-term president,” the official told me. “Our campaign’s response to those criticisms is that there is still a place for you on this campaign.”

There is an undeniable concern within the Democratic Party, and particularly among progressives, that the lessons of 2016 will be forgotten and Trump will win a second term in office. The fear, the first senior progressive Hill staffer explained, is that Biden might enter “a similar phase as the Clinton campaign where you’re simply making an oppositional push against Trump and his leadership style, without providing that kind of an affirmative alternative that will actually motivate a particular demographic that is oftentimes uninterested in engaging.”

Of course, the hope is that with one Trump victory already in the rearview mirror, there won’t be the same sense of complacency there was in 2016. “A Trump incumbency does tend to clarify matters for people. I think a lot of the people who will sit out and not vote at all were unlikely to get engaged anyway necessarily. I think some of this is a little bit of the way in which online dynamics and Twitter commentary attempt to refract and I’m not sure that it necessarily reflects a kind of a broader sentiment,” the progressive staffer continued. “I mean, I do think that there’s going to be a kind of a subdued response from progressives and from young people, but I don’t see the same kind of disaffection as one might have expected given the last time.”

With Sanders on the ropes, remembering 2016, Obama confidants say the former president wants to create the conditions whereby voters can choose unity. And Trump, says David Axelrod, will help with that choice.